Geocaching Marathon

Today was a lovely day. One of the best days this year so far. And it happened at the weekend. And Daddy wasn't working!

So it was out for a walk around an area near home (so near, we don't need to get in the car to drive there). It's a 2 mile circular path on the very edge of Livingston popular with cyclists, runners and dog-walkers; and as of a few weeks ago... Geocachers! There never used to be any caches here and now there are SEVEN. So we set out with intentions to get them all!

We almost failed at the second hurdle when we followed the path when we should have followed the more popular dog-walker's route. We missed that cache (but picked it up again before finishing). The furthest away cache was way off the beaten track and almost under a viaduct for a railway line that we didn't even know existed! We had to fight our way through overgrown woodland, dodging puddles and little rivers on the way like proper exploring! It was a nice cache though - called Welcome to the Jungle and filled with plastic animal toys. I managed to swap for a model of the How to Train Your Dragon baddie! And then we found the correct route back to the main path avoiding all the brambles!

The next cache was called The Last Dinosaur Egg and it took quite a bit of finding. It was the yellow egg from inside a large Kinder egg. I'd loved to have seen (and eaten) the chocolate egg that it was inside!

Now we're back home, having earned an afternoon playing the XBox!

I'm a Beaver!

Today I joined the Beavers. I've been along a couple of times before and really enjoy it so I got a Beavers jumper and joined today. Lucky Mummy now has SIX badges to sew onto my jumper!

I stood inside a circle and made my Beaver Pledge and then shook Brown Beaver's hand - left hand for us Beavers: I'm made for this place!

National Museum of Scotland (again)

We went back to the National Museum of Scotland today. I really love it there but I'm going to love it a lot more when the renovation is finished later this year and they have a dinosaur exhibit! I can't wait!

I love the whole experience of going to the museum. We get the train in to Edinburgh and then walk up long steps of Fleshmarket Close (with Mummy complaining about her knees and holding her nose because of the smell!) and then try to find another close to explore to get to the High Street and beyond.

The first thing you meet in the museum isn't even an exhibit but is a lot of fun! It's a massive bowl for putting coins in. You drop a coin in the top and it runs around in large circles for what seems like ages before dropping into the narrow hole in the bottom - almost makes the trip worthwhile all on its own!



The special exhibit at the moment is on lighthouses. There's lots of interesting information about the history of lighthouses around the UK and an excellent wee hands-on display about light, mirrors, refraction and reflection that we played with for ages!

Always a winner at the musem is the Connect section. Lots of toys and robots to play with. I always make Daddy turn the handle to create the electricity to fire the little rocket. I tell him it's to see if he can make it reach the next floor but it always goes the same height, it's just to watch him get puffed and almost fall over when he's done!

One of the things to play with here are pulleys. There are three seats, each with a rope attached and over a different number of pulleys. You can sit on a seat and pull the rope and try to lift yourself. The more pulleys there are the easier it gets... Although you can't really tell from my face on the EASIEST seat!


And then you can generate your own electricity. Turn the handles fast enough and you can power a light, a radio and a fan - no problem to someone as fast as me!


And then after Mummy spent a bunch of Daddy's money in the shops, it was home time again. Back on the train. Can't wait for the next museum visit.

A day with friends

Today we were still in Kingussie but met some friends from back home! We've been trying to catch up with them since before Christmas with no success and here they are on holiday in the same place as us!

Firstly we met at the Highland Wildlife Park. Daddy took lots of pictures of the animals but I won't bore you with them. My friend and I did totally monopolise the zip line for a while though so here are some photos of that!




And here we are riding a wolf!


It's not actually a real wolf you know...


Alright, here's one shot of a tiger. The kid in the photo is not my friend but that tiger turned around and marked the window! If not for the window, it would have hit that girl in the face! You should have seen her parents laugh!!!

From the Wildlife Park we headed to the Frank Bruce Sculpture Trail at Feshie. Not only were we showing our friends the sculpture trail, we were also introducing them to Geocaching! And it was a puzzle geocache where we had to count the faces on all the sculptures to help make up the coordinates for the cache. We had loads of fun and found our first ammo box geocache!

Loch Insh Geocaching

Back up to Kingussie during the school holidays and this morning Daddy and I went out to Loch Insh to collect a geocache. It was an interesting one because there was no phone signal when we got to the area so Daddy didn't have the coordinates to put in the GPS. We had the clue and knew roughly where it was so headed for the area and just had a good look around. It was in the roots of a tree and we found on our fourth or fifth tree!





It was a murky day with very low cloud but Loch Insh still provided some amazing views.


And where there's a large body of water and a little bit of time, it's always necessary to throw things into the water!

Too cool for school